Ten Ren?

Is anyone familiar with Ten Ren teas? A new Asian market opened up near where I work, and they had a fair selection, but I'm hesitant to buy big tins of something that might just not be very good. Looked under the TeaVendor subforum, but no one's nominated them for anything, which is when I thought I'd just post and see if anyone's familiar with it.

What the market had: High Mountain Oolong, Tung Ting, Jasmine, Osmanthus, and a couple others including a generic "green tea" and a couple options in bags.

We have a TenRen in San Francisco, but your satisfaction may depend on your expectations. The physical quality of their tea can be exceptional, but the flavor is mostly in a stronger, Taiwanese style. In addition, the main strong point with TenRen is the ability to taste their teas at their tea room - a great way to learn which teas you like.

The teas I've sampled - black and green oolong, green, puerh - seem to lack the finesse of other established vendors, like the Imperial Tea Court. The best I've tried was a foil lined bag of some Lo Chun sourced elsewhere.

I've found some nice teas at TenRen, including my first Pouchong, a decent dark roasted Ti Kuan Yin, and a nice ripe puerh, but as I've explored more, I've spent less time in their shop because the selection is more limited. I've always gotten decent teas from them, but haven't tried most of their highest rated versions of the teas (they usually sell 3-5 different grades of each type of tea) to really compare them to other suppliers.

They let you try the teas? Here they are very rude, pushy and want you to buy anything literally. I was looking for Oriental Beauty to enjoy that night. They said they had none because it was Taiwanese. After she mentioned she carried only Chinese and Taiwanese. A bit of a language barrier perhaps. Although then, I asked about Tie Kuwan Yin. She showed me tins. I then asked about the loose bulk tea they had at the front. She only let me smell it.

inaris_servant wrote:They let you try the teas? ....Did you have to ask to try them before hand ?

I believe Ten Ren is a franchise operation, and a lot of the friendliness or lack thereof is probably due to the operators of each particular shop. The one near me is also a tea bar, so you can buy bulk teas or go to the tea bar and order prepared teas. I think I came over to the bulk tea counter the first time, started talking about teas, and was offered a sample of the puerh I was interested in, without having to ask for it.